


Leave it for Some Other Bleeding Heart

by kayliemalinza



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Angst and Humor, Bastard John Winchester, Bodily Fluids, Gen, Implied Torture, Kittens, Mild Gore, Time spent in hell
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-03
Updated: 2012-09-03
Packaged: 2017-11-13 11:02:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,614
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/502825
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kayliemalinza/pseuds/kayliemalinza
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam finds a box of kittens in bad shape, but Dean's not on board with this rescue business. Set during Season 4. </p><p>Teaser: "You can't keep a box of kittens," says Dean. He is busting out the Daddy-eyebrows for this. They didn't work when Sam was eight, but Dean's had practice. He's even sliced and diced a few kid-shaped monsters since then. (He's sliced and diced a lot of things.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Leave it for Some Other Bleeding Heart

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Mondegreen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mondegreen/gifts).



> Warning: contains graphic descriptions of unhealthy animals.

Dean is seeing two moments at once. It's a goddamn collapse of the space-time continuum because he is seeing his brother's hand and that hand is both the pudgy cup of an eight-year-old and the salad tongs of a mid-twenties behemoth. And it's holding a kitten.

Okay so maybe there's no wormhole involved, but Dean still can't shake the belly-flipping sense of deja vu.

"You can't keep a kitten," he says.

"Dean," says Sammy and his dewy, sensitive eyes. "There's a whole box."

"You can't keep a box of kittens," says Dean. He is busting out the Daddy-eyebrows for this. They didn't work when Sam was eight, but Dean's had practice. He's even sliced and diced a few kid-shaped monsters since then. (He's sliced and diced a lot of things.)

"Someone just abandoned them on the side of the road." Sam shoves his hand a few inches closer to Dean, like the fuzzy vermin he's holding has its own gravity well that Dean will somehow fall into. Negative. The kitten isn't even cute. It's a tortoiseshell (universally recognized as the ugliest breed) with an orange splotch beneath its nose that looks like half of a Hitler moustache. The head is triangular and wonky like an alien and there's a whole mess of goop seeping from the corners of its eyes. Some of it's gone crusty on the lids. The front paws are sticking out between Sam's fingers, spindly and twisted in midair, with yellow claws splayed out like tick legs.

"That is a fucking ugly cat," says Dean. It also stinks.

Sam huffs in frustration and tilts his head to the side. He's ramping up his Bitch Face but you know what? The kitten's eyes are pointing in two different directions and it's hard to compete with that kind of upstaging. 

"Just put it back where you found it. Some other bleeding heart will come along and take care of the whole mess, okay?" says Dean. He drops the trunk shut and shoulders his duffel. "Come on, man!" he snaps, because Sam's just staring at him, hand still outstretched.

"I already moved the box into our room," says Sam, then smirks because he's an asshole.

The kitten chooses this moment to meow. It's a really pathetic meow that comes out more like a chirp, but regardless: the cat is also an asshole.

"I think Little Orphan Fleabag just pooped on you," says Dean. "But you have fun with your rescue mission. I'm gonna go grab some dinner." He slings his duffel into the backseat and drives off, leaving Sam in the parking lot to gag at the sweet precious baby diarrhea dripping from his hand.

* * *

Dean gets back to their room and kicks the door open because his hands are full of takeout and his duffel's about to slide off his shoulder.

"Watch the door!" Sam yells from inside, which is dumb because of course Dean is watching the door; he's _walking through it_. "Dammit, one got out!" Sam shoves Dean to the side, which should be a crime when a man is holding cheeseburgers, and disappears into the night. "Don't step on any!" he calls back as the door snicks shut behind him.

"Don't step on any what?" Dean asks. Then he sees the pack of feral poop-monsters gone free-range. "I'm gonna kill him." Dean picks his way over to the table carefully. He doesn't actually care about the little darlings, but he's pretty sure that grinding kitten guts into the carpet will earn them a housekeeping surcharge, and maybe a call to the cops. 

Dean sits down, unwraps his hamburger and gets his glare ready. It's a good glare. He can tell by the way that Sam's face falls when he squeezes sideways through the door, scuttling his foot sideways to block off the escape route.

"They're feisty little things, aren't they?" Sam offers, sheepishly pulling an orange kitten out from under his jacket. The escape artist, apparently. 

"Sam," Dean says.

"You uh, you got something on your leg," says Sam.

Dean knows that. You think he doesn't know that? Those little kitten claws are fucking _sharp_. Dean feels a sudden intense sympathy for every tree he ever climbed as a kid.

"You cannot keep these kittens," says Dean. "What are we gonna do, haul them around in the Impala? Let 'em stretch their legs when we fill up for gas? I'm sure they'll come right back when we whistle. Hey, cats are natural hunters! Maybe we can teach them to sniff out ghosts!"

"Dean, I know all that," Sam says. 

He sounds reasonable, but it could be another fake-out like twenty years ago, and Dean's gonna wake up from an interstate nap to the dulcet sounds of a kitten puking on the floorboards and their dad having a coronary.

Sam sighs. "I just had to get them off the side of the road, okay? I'm researching local no-kill shelters. We'll drop them off on our way out of town. Um." He gestures at the front of Dean's shirt, where the kitten (maybe the tortoiseshell Sam showed him first; Dean can't really tell) is clambering its way up. "You want me to take care of that for you?"

"Yes, please," Dean says quickly. He's halfway through his hamburger and he's not gonna contract some weird-ass disease by touching a street cat. "Did it get poop on me? Tell me it didn't get poop on me!"

"No, no, you're fine," Sam assures him. "Come on, buddy," he says to the kitten. It's a surprisingly involved ordeal to unhook all the claws. Dean passes the time by chewing his food obnoxiously in Sam's ear.

* * *

Dean votes that they stash the cats back in the box, but Sam says "Don't be silly, Dean, they need to explore their environment!" and Dean drops the subject before Sam starts lecturing him on the typical socio-psychological development of mammals. And okay, it is pretty entertaining tossing crumpled up hamburger wrappers at them.

"Two points if you hit the gray one," says Dean.

One of these days Sam is going to break his lips off from pursing them so tight. 

Half an hour later, Sam has the wussiest browser history in the world and a shopping list that covers the front and back of a sheet of hotel stationary. He takes the keys and tries to sneak out, but Dean puts his foot down (figuratively speaking, since there are still breakables romping around.) "You're not leaving me alone with these things loose," he says, mostly because he wants to take a shower eventually and has this vivid paranoia of the whole litter flying through the air to attack his junk. 

Of course, when Sam asks, Dean pleads poop. The kittens have been pretty good so far about using the tray of shredded newspaper Sam rigged up as a litter box, but Dean doesn't trust them as far as—well, he can throw them pretty far, so let's just say he trusts them less than that. "Remember that time a kitten shit on your hand?" Dean says with a nostalgic smile.

"Shut up," says Sam, and pulls out the cardboard box he found them in.

The box is about as ugly as the cats. Aside from the rain damage and the funky smell, the cardboard is torn up in so many places that Dean wonders if there's a hidden message. They salted and burned a ghost like that, once: a cryptographer who scratched Cold War cyphers into the doors of Volkswagons. The kittens are clearly too dumb to be cryptographers, but they could be possessed. Dean surreptitiously pours a little holy water into their bowl.

Sam gets a towel out of the Impala—a motel towel that they got bloody a few months back and decided to steal instead of trying to explain to Housekeeping—and arranges it in the bottom of the box with all the care of a French maid tucking in silk sheets. Then he spends twenty minutes chasing down the whole litter, using exciting techniques such as the Left Hand Curtain Ambush, the Radiator Fumble, and, Dean's personal favorite, the Under the Bed Excavation. Dean may or may not have recorded a video on his cell phone. 

The last kitten is the easiest to capture, mostly because it's summiting Dean's kneecap again.

"Seriously?" Sam says. "You can't help me out and put _that_ one in the box?"

Dean rocks his leg from side to side, just to see the little dude's eyes bug out, and says, "They're your cats, Sammy."

* * *

Dean stands over the box finishing his beer before he jumps in the shower. They yowled for a good ten minutes after Sam left, though whether that was because of their captivity or because they keep stepping on each other's heads, Dean doesn't know. Maybe he shouldn't have yowled back.

By this point they've quieted down and aggregated into a pile. The squirming makes it a little difficult to tell them apart, but as best Dean can tell, there are five: two torties (the one that Sam showed him in the parking lot, with the orange splotch under its nose, and the other one with a white back paw;) two grays (one with stripes a little darker than the other, but mostly indistinguishable); and the orange one that keeps trying to vamoose (Dean has privately named that one Steve McQueen.) All of them have pale skin flashing through ragged fur, covered with skittering black specks. 

Dean licks his thumb and forefinger and squishes the flea crawling on his forearm. 

"I guess you guys have to deal with bloodsuckers, too," he says.

* * *

Sam is back by the time Dean gets out of the shower. The cats are loose again, but they're crowding around Sam's feet, screaming their heads off while he dollops brown goop onto a paper plate.

"Baby food?" Dean asks when he gets a good look at the little glass jar. 

"They're babies," Sam says with a shrug.

"Yeah, I get that, but what's wrong with milk?" Dean says. 

"That's only in cartoons," says Sam, with the air of snide authority that only a Google search can provide. 

Dean starts to do the math on the price of a dozen jars of baby food versus a gallon of milk, then stops before he gives himself an aneurism. 

"So, are we going to actually do anything about the job in this town?" Dean asks. "You know, mailboxes bursting into flame, the homeowners dying bloody a few days later? Any of that ring a bell?"

"Yeah, okay," says Sam. "Let me just give them a flea bath, first."

Dean scratches his armpit and decides not to argue with that.

* * *

Cas shows up later that night, when Dean is two and a half episodes into an X-Files marathon. The usual gust of holy wind (divine flatulence?) sends the hamburger wrappers and dollar store cat toys tumbling all over the room. The kittens magically disappear except for the orange one, who puffs up and hisses at the new pair of shoes in the room.

"Watch your step," Dean says helpfully. Dean has had a few beers and come to the opinion that kittens are alright. They don't murder people or have anything to do with the Apocalypse, and that makes them a-okay in Dean's book. Plus, the white-foot tortoiseshell slept on his ankles for a whole episode and kept them nice and warm. 

Castiel regards the angry kitten attacking his shoelaces and cocks his head to the side. 

"Castiel, hey!" says Sam, jumping up from the table. "I, uh, I rescued some kittens," he explains.

"I am aware," says Cas. "Your compassion is commendable."

Sam beams. Dean wishes his little brother wouldn't place so much stock in the approval of feathery assholes, but at least Cas is the best of the lot. 

"These kittens are diseased," Cas says, the same way he'd say, _ayup, storm's a comin'_ and tongue his corn cob pipe to the other side of his mouth in an alternate reality.

Sam looks devastated. Dean wants to throw a beer bottle at his head because, after all the crap they've gone through, and Sam busts out the twanging heartstrings for some freaking kittens?

"I'm trying to find a no-kill shelter to take them to," says Sam, "but apparently there's been a lot of litters this year, and what with the state budget cuts...." He trails off, either because of Dean's eyebrow or because he's realized on his own that Castiel has no frame of reference for government finance.

"That is unfortunate," says Cas. Dean figures he's just being polite. As well as angels understand manners, anyway.

"Dude, just take them to a regular shelter," Dean says

"No, Dean!" Sam says. "If they really are sick, the shelter might euthanize them without even trying to help them."

"Yeah? And?" says Dean. "Even if you did get them cleaned up and adopted out, they'd probably get hit by a car and die anyway. Besides," he says, ignoring Sam's glare and the angry clamp of his arms across his chest and Cas' awkward stare. "They're just cats. There's a million of them on the planet. Listen, Sam, I know you want to be the good guy here, but you're just wasting your time."

"You don't get any more beer tonight," says Sam, and snatches the rest of the six pack off the table. 

"Now who's being inhumane?" Dean asks.

Cas glances between the two of them, slow and creaky like a basement door. "Dean does have several good points, Sam," he says after a moment. "I've heard many of my brothers say similar things about mankind."

Oh, that fucking _bastard_.

Sam crosses his arms and stares Dean down. Dean manages to ignore him for a good thirty seconds, but then he's out of beer. 

"Whatever, I don't care," he says. "Look, you got an angel of the Lord right here. Just ask Cas to get his Doctor Doolittle on."

Cas peers at Dean. "I don't understand," he says, which is kinda hilarious (more hilarious than usual) because the orange kitten has flopped over on his shoes and started purring like an outboard motor. Over the edge of the bed, Dean can see two other kittens waddling their way over like they're drawn to the sound of Castiel's voice. It's worse than Doctor Doolittle. Cas is freaking _Snow White_.

"Cas, could you heal them?" Sam asks. "I mean, if it's not too much trouble...."

Cas regards him for a long moment. "It is not too much trouble. However, as Dean has pointed out, it won't do much good."

There goes the collapse of the time-space continuum again: Dean's staring at Sam's face in the sideview mirror, stretched and florid but dry, while twenty yards back a black tail flickers in the grass by the highway. ("There are plenty of woods for it to run around in," Dean had said, quiet enough that their dad could pretend he didn't hear it. "Plenty of cars to run over it," Sammy answered, loud and bitter.)

"Screw you guys," says Dean. "Forget the crap I said, okay, Cas? The kittens are right in front of you. They are _right there_ and you have the ability to help them, so you do it. End of story." He rolls off the bed and grabs another beer before Sam can stop him. "I suck ass at philosophical discussions anyway."

Cas nods at Dean, his mouth bending in that weird non-smile he does. Sam squeezes Dean's shoulder as he walks past. Dean has no idea why they think he needs gestures of approval but whatever, he has a cold beer and nothing's trying to kill him at the moment. Life is dandy.

Dean bounces back down on the bed so hard the springs squeak and goes back to his X-Files marathon. 

Sam pokes around the corners of the room, clicking his tongue at the two kittens still AWOL, while Castiel crouches down. The hem of his trenchcoat folds against the carpet. Dean knows the trenchcoat was mass-produced, and the weave is filled with dust from a series of factories and flatbed trucks and cardboard boxes and department store back rooms. It's probably polyester-blend, for fuck's sake. But the carpet is the industrial grade stuff that looks like diarrhea floating in the toilet bowl and feels like a five o-clock shadow, and Dean doesn't want it touching that coat.

This is stupid. Dean is aware. Then again, Dean has an unhealthy relationship with his leather jacket, so at least this new neurosis is in keeping with tradition.

(But a trenchcoat? _Really?_ )

Dean drinks his beer.

Castiel picks up the nearest kitten (the orange one who puffed up at his shoes) and cradles it belly-up in the palm of his hand. His fingers crook around it, still and smooth-tipped, while the kitten is all twitchy, splay-toed paws. The kitten goes still when Cas presses his finger to its forehead, like in those stupid books Sam used to read, something about aliens that lived in people's ears and these jerkass kids who would put animals in a trance to steal their DNA or some crap like that. Maybe Cas will transform into a cat someday. Weirder shit has happened.

Cas puts the kitten down and picks up another one. His face is set in his usual serious expression, a faint rigidity of concentration around the mouth. Dean wonders what he looked like when he put Dean back together. Did he even have a vessel then? Maybe the whole affair was blanked by searing light, without even the courtesy of an anime transformation montage. Dean's body was just instantly whole again, soul plunked inside. It wasn't like this. 

There was no steady, careful movement of fingers while Dean's bones uncrackled, while the mush of his insides firmed up again, while the ligaments and tendons went taut and the gas bulging his belly dissipated (though Dean wonders if he went round-gut the way corpses usually do, since he was ventilated, slashed across the belly like a TV dinner.) Castiel didn't stroke his knuckles gently down Dean's throat, or press his thumb against the parting of his lips and the hard line of teeth beneath. He didn't cradle Dean in his palms and lay him down at Sam's feet.

There's a fifth of whiskey in Dean's duffel bag. He plunks his empty beer bottle on the nightstand and yanks the bag up from the foot of the bed to get it. Sam is sitting cross legged on the floor, corralling the un-healed kittens in his lap, and doesn't notice. Good. Dean doesn't need the nagging, okay. He doesn't need someone to lay hands on him or wipe the gunk from his eyes or wrap him up in their old flannel shirt. Dean has booze and a belly full of burger and bed all to himself. Sam is talking quietly and Cas gives him monotone syllables in return. There's no wailing ghosts or snarling monsters or big black dogs howling hungry in the distance. 

On the TV, Scully and Mulder sit stranded on a rock in a dark lake and talk about their feelings, rambling and fervent and soft, and Dean rests his eyes for just a minute.

* * *

It's pitch black when Dean wakes up again. He reaches first for the whiskey and finds it on the nightstand, cap on, sides smooth and cool. He hears a noise, probably what woke him—an awful dry scratching, and then a squeak that's more like a shape in the air than actual sound. Then the scratching again, erratic and quick. Panicky.

"Sam," Dean growls into his pillow. "Your damn pests are making noise."

In the other bed, Sam snores loud enough to make Dean's nose ache in sympathy. 

" _Sam_ ," Dean yells. It seems like a yell, anyway, air shoved out of a mouth still half-asleep and into the midnight silence. 

Sam rolls over and farts.

"Great," says Dean, and wipes the drool off his face with a corner of the pillow. He shuffles into the bathroom to piss, and leaves the light on and the door cracked when he's done. In the slice of florescent, he sees a kitten—that damn orange one—crouched by the tattered edge of the box, ears flattened, eyes wide and flashing green. 

"Oh, so now Steve McQueen wants back in captivity," says Dean. "Didn't know how good you had it, did you?" He steps over there, does a quick check that the other four are accounted for in the snooze pile, and crouches down. "I keep telling people to stay where it's safe, but you brats always want to find out for yourselves."

The kitten bumps its head against Dean's ankle. Dean reaches for it on instinct and the kitten nearly catapults itself into his palm with a tremble and a flick of its tail. Dean can feel its rib cage, little slivers of bone pulsing in and out.

This thing is so delicate, but that wouldn't matter in Hell; there are razor-thin knives and awls so fine they'll pierce all the way through your belly before you notice. He could part the fur and slice the skin, peel it away like shrink wrap, pluck out the doll-sized organs and the tangled up ball of intestines. He could pry open its mouth and prick the palate until it runs red. He could slice up the paper-thin ears along the crooked veins.

Dean lifts the cat with both hands, slow and spooky, and sets it down next to its pile of siblings. "Here's a tip," he says. "Stick with the other guy."


End file.
